Australian one man band Cryptivore rakes the earth with Celestial Extinction, the inaugural long-player.
Brisbane’s own Chris Anning handles all the instruments, including voice, for his project Cryptivore. Five years ago he released a demo called Unseen Divinity, and now we have ten new songs. There isn’t any inherent reason why one person cannot take on the complete burden of creation and performance, except that it is a lot to do – it’s an enormous task. Sometimes it turns out well and other times you really miss the third party perspective collaborators provide. In the case of Cryptivore, the end result is excellent and engaging death metal. Well done.
The ten songs on Celestial Extinction all fall in the two-to-three-minute range, and brevity is an opportunity for high impact. “Gate Of Dismal Torture” is an excellent example. Clocking in at just over two minutes, it has great hooks and is able to stimulate suspense with tempo changes and unexpected punches. The track the follows immediately, “The Ethereal Deceased,” has a convincing doom intro followed by a catchy hook then pressed on by a forceful death metal verse. There are many looks on this album – it is full of exploration.
The elements in the music are clear enough to see. The best part about the music is the way Anning combines them and puts his own unique flair and sensibility in the mix. The first bars of “Solemn Desolation” are like a call to dark meditation and that gets almost immediately juxtaposed with a ravaging death metal torrent but then on the way out there is a cooking groove. I got into this album immediately and stayed with it all the way through, from the opening wails of “Cocoon Hecatomb” to the closing dramatic bars of the anchoring title track. Recommended.
Celestial Extinction is out on March 15th through Bitter Loss Records on digital, CD, and vinyl.
Links.
Bandcamp, https://bitterlossrecords-au.bandcamp.com/album/celestial-extinction
Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Cryptivore/
Bitter Loss Records, https://www.bitterlossrecords.com/
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